Japan to resume funding to UN Palestinian refugee agency

UNRWA Commissioner General Philippe Lazzarini gestures after a meeting with the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Swiss Federal Parliament's National Council in Geneva, on March 26, 2024. (AFP)
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Updated 30 March 2024
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Japan to resume funding to UN Palestinian refugee agency

  • The Foreign Ministry said in a statement: “Japan and the UNRWA confirmed that they will advance final coordination about necessary efforts to resume Japan’s contribution”

TOKYO: Japan is preparing to resume funding to the UN’s crisis-hit Palestinian refugee agency, which coordinates nearly all aid to Gaza, the government said.
Once the sixth-largest contributor to the agency, Japan joined more than a dozen countries in pausing funding after Israel claimed that 12 of UNRWA’s 13,000 Gaza employees were involved in the deadly Oct. 7 Hamas attack.
Foreign Minister Yoko Kamikawa met with UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini in Tokyo to discuss the agency’s measures to strengthen governance and transparency.




Members of Jordanian armed forces load aid parcels to be dropped over Gaza, in Zarqa, Jordan, March 29, 2024. (REUTERS)

The Foreign Ministry said in a statement: “Japan and the UNRWA confirmed that they will advance final coordination about necessary efforts to resume Japan’s contribution.” Japanese media reports said the funding suspension, which was lifted in January, was expected to resume in the first half of April.
The abrupt suspension of funding has threatened UNRWA’s efforts to deliver desperately needed aid in Gaza, where the UN has warned of an impending famine.
Australia, Canada, Sweden, and others said they were resuming aid this month.
Lazzarini said on Tuesday that the agency has enough funds to keep operating until at least the end of May.
The ministry said that Kamikawa “pointed out the importance of ensuring transparency and traceability of fund flows and the neutrality of UNRWA staff.”
The UN has launched both an internal and an independent investigation but has said Israel has not provided it with any evidence to support the claims against its workers.

 


Israel urged to give media ‘unrestricted’ Gaza access

Palestinians receive donated food at a community kitchen in Beit Lahia, northern Gaza Strip, Saturday, May 3, 2025. (AP)
Updated 5 sec ago
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Israel urged to give media ‘unrestricted’ Gaza access

  • The FPA, which has filed an appeal with the Israeli Supreme Court challenging the ban, said its members “salute our Palestinian colleagues who continue to report the story at great personal risk”

JERUSALEM: The Foreign Press Association Saturday called on Israel to allow news media “unrestricted” access to Gaza, off-limits to outside journalists operating independently since the war there began in October 2023.
“We call on Israel to stop the never-ending delays, uphold the fundamental principles of press freedom and allow unrestricted entry for journalists to Gaza,” the Jerusalem-based association wrote in a statement to mark World Press Freedom Day.
The FPA has more than 350 members working for foreign media outlets in Israel and the Palestinian Territories.
An AFP journalist sits on its board of directors.
The association criticized Israel for an “unprecedented ban preventing foreign journalists from entering Gaza,” calling the decision a “mark of shame for a country that claims to be a beacon of democracy.”
The FPA, which has filed an appeal with the Israeli Supreme Court challenging the ban, said its members “salute our Palestinian colleagues who continue to report the story at great personal risk.”
“Nonetheless, the Israeli restrictions have severely hindered independent reporting and robbed the world of a full picture of the situation in Gaza,” the association added.
The war that continues to devastate Gaza was triggered by an unprecedented Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023.
With the exception of a journalist for US outlet CNN who entered a field hospital in Rafah operated by the United Arab Emirates in 2023, the only outside journalists allowed into Gaza, which is under Israeli blockade, did so with Israeli forces.
Their reports were subject to military censorship.
The UN Human Rights office in the Occupied Palestinian Territory said it “sombrely marks World Press Freedom Day as Palestinian journalists continue to be killed or injured at an alarming rate with impunity.”
The office said it had independently verified the killing of 211 journalists in the Gaza Strip since October 7, 2023, including 28 women.
Israel’s military has accused many of the journalists killed in its strikes of being “terrorists,” members of the Palestinian militant groups Hamas or Islamic Jihad.
Hamas’s attack on Israel which sparked the war resulted in the deaths of 1,218 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official figures.
According to health ministry figures in Hamas-run Gaza, the overall death toll in the territory since the war broke out is more than 52,400.
 

 


How Napoleon’s Egypt campaign sparked a printing revolution in the Arab world

Updated 21 min 17 sec ago
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How Napoleon’s Egypt campaign sparked a printing revolution in the Arab world

  • Greatest legacy of the 1798 Napoleonic invasion of Egypt lies not in what the French took, but in what they left behind
  • Rare books on display at Abu Dhabi International Book Fair reveal printing roots of Egypt’s modern intellectual awakening

LONDON: On Sunday, July 1, 1798, a vast fleet of ships appeared off the Egyptian city of Alexandria. Aboard the flagship Orient was the French general Napoleon Bonaparte, still six years away from being proclaimed emperor of France but fresh from a series of military victories in Europe and determined to undermine Britain’s influence in Egypt and the Middle East.

With him were 50,000 men, hundreds of horses, numerous artillery pieces and, incongruously, 200 members of the Commission des Sciences et des Arts, a group including engineers, mathematicians, astronomers, geographers, writers, artists — and 22 printers.

Back in France, between 1809 and 1829 the survivors of this group of savants would produce the 37-volume Description de l’Egypte, a triumphant catalogue of all things Egyptian, ancient and modern.

The port city of Rashid, or Rosetta, is located on the Nile Delta where French soldiers discovered the famous stone stele in 1799 - key to deciphering Egyptian scripts. (Getty Images)

Their achievement would not be shared by Napoleon’s army. A month after the landing, virtually all of Napoleon’s ships were destroyed at the Battle of the Nile by a British fleet commanded by Horatio Nelson.

The following year Napoleon and a few men returned to France in secret. The general he left in charge, Jean-Baptiste Kleber, was assassinated a few months later by an Aleppo-born student living in Cairo. 

The remains of the French army, decimated by disease and endless conflict, surrendered to British forces in 1801 and, under the terms of an ignominious treaty, were ferried back to France on the enemy’s ships. 

IN NUMBERS:

• 50,000 Men who accompanied Napoleon to Egypt.

• £30,000 Price tag of Expedition de Syrie jusqu’a la prise de Jaffa.

• 1820 Year in which Bulaq Press was established in Cairo.

To rub salt into the French wounds, many of the Egyptian antiquities that had been looted by Napoleon’s troops and scholars fell into British hands. Some, including the Rosetta Stone, the ancient granite stele inscribed with a decree in three languages that allowed the cracking of the code of Egyptian hieroglyphs, found their way to the British Museum, where they remain to this day.

But arguably the greatest legacy of the Napoleonic invasion of Egypt lies not in what the French took, but in what they left behind — the art of printing with movable type.

The Bulaq Press, established in Cairo in 1820 by Ottoman viceroy Muhammad Ali Pasha, was inspired by the French press that was brought along by Napoleon in his conquest of Egypt. (Photos courtesy of Bibliotheca Alexandrina)

Some of the products of this unintended consequence of Napoleon’s ill-fated Egyptian adventure can be seen this week at the Abu Dhabi International Book Fair — an extraordinary collection of rare books and pamphlets that together tell a fascinating story.

“Aware of the printing press’s potential as a tool for governance and propaganda, Napoleon brought with him advanced French printing technology — something entirely new to Egypt,” said Pom Harrington, the owner of London-based Peter Harrington Rare Books.

Just days after landing near Alexandria, Napoleon’s team of printers established the Imprimerie orientale et francaise, under the direction of the linguist and orientalist Jean-Joseph Marcel and the Marc Aurel, the 18-year-old son of a printer and bookseller.

It was, incidentally, Jean-Joseph Marcel who first recognized the third script on the Rosetta stone as Egyptian Demotic, which proved to be the ancient linguistic key to unravelling the mystery of hieroglyphics. 

This picture taken on July 26, 2022 shows a close-up view of the cartouche of the Ptolemaic dynasty Pharaoh Ptolemy V "Epiphanes" (210-180 BC) inscribed with the rest of the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic text in the upper portion of the Rosetta Stone, on display at the British Museum in London. (AFP)

A first-edition copy of one of their first publications, a pamphlet containing seven reports of expeditions against Ottoman forces in Syria, is at the show.

The £30,000 price tag of Expedition de Syrie jusqu’a la prise de Jaffa (Expedition from Syria to the capture of Jaffa) reflects its extreme rarity. No copies of the pamphlet are known to exist in institutional libraries, none has ever appeared at auction and the manuscript is not even listed in Albert Geiss’ exhaustive Histoire de l’Imprimerie en Egypte, published by the Institut Francais d’Archeologie Orientale in Cairo in 1907.

Following the French victory over Ottoman forces at the Battle of the Pyramids on July 21, the press was relocated to Cairo, where it was renamed the Imprimerie nationale du Caire. 

Another valuable book on show in Abu Dhabi is an extremely rare first-edition copy of the first Arabic dictionary to be printed in the Arabic world. The Vocabulaire francais-arabe, contenant les mots principaux et d’un usage plus journalier (French-Arabic vocabulary, containing the main words and those of more everyday use) was printed between September 1798 and September 1799.

The first Arabic dictionary published in the Arabic world, printed by the French press in Cairo in 1798 or 1799. (AFP)

The final eight pages of common phrases reflect the imperial expectations of those who would use the dictionary to communicate with their temporary Egyptian subjects. Alongside more typical phrases, some of which would be of use to modern travellers today, such as “I am hungry” and “I am going to Cairo,” is the altogether less common instruction “Etrillez mon cheval” — “Brush my horse.”

One of the most fascinating documents produced in Cairo by the French press was an account of the interrogation and trial of Suleiman Al-Halabi, the young man who stabbed to death Jean-Baptiste Kleber, Napoleon’s successor in Egypt as commander of the French army. 

Printed in 1800, a year before the end of the French occupation, of the 500 copies that were printed of the Recueil des pieces relatives a la procedure et au jugement de Soleyman El-Hhaleby, assassin du general en chef Kleber (“Collection of documents relating to the procedure and judgement of Soleyman El-Hhaleby, assassin of general Kleber”), only 14 survive.

An account of the investigation and trial of Suleiman al-Halabi, executed in 1800 for the assassination of the commander of the French army in Egypt. (Supplied)

Suleiman Al-Halabi’s execution on June 17, 1800, the day of his victim’s funeral, was a gruesome affair; after his right forearm was burnt to the bone, he took four hours to die after being impaled on a metal spike. 

The Cairo press was shut down after the French withdrew, and the printing presses were sent back to France, “but its impact was lasting,” said Harrington.

“The French conquerors could not have foreseen that the introduction of printing with movable types would lead to a revolution in printing in the Arab world, demonstrating to Egyptian scholars the transformative potential of print.”

The influence of the short-lived French printing house lingered on through individuals including Nicolas Musabiki, whose father Yusuf had been trained during the French occupation. 

Nicolas later played a crucial role in the Bulaq Press, established in Cairo in 1820 by Muhammad Ali Pasha, the Ottoman viceroy and the ruler of Egypt from 1805 to 1848.

“Ali Pasha is seen as the founder of modern Egypt and was clearly inspired by Napoleon’s printing presses,” said Harrington.

“In 1815 he sent the Syrian Nicolas Musabiki to Italy to study type-founding and printing, and ordered three presses from Milan, along with paper and ink, also from Italy. 

“The establishment of the Bulaq Press meant that he could print manuals for the military, official guidebooks for the administration, and textbooks for new schools.” 

Bulaq’s presses “primarily used the Naskh script, valued for its legibility and formality, making the new texts easily readable.”

In Europe, printing with movable type had begun in the 15th century — the Gutenberg Bible was printed in Germany in 1455.

“The delay in printing in the Arab world was certainly linked to the notion of calligraphy not only as an art form, but also as an expression of spirituality,” said Harrington.

“It wasn’t until the introduction of lithographic techniques that the beauty of Arabic script could be adapted to printing more easily.”

The Bulaq Press printed its first book, an Italian-Arabic dictionary, in 1822. But one of its greatest triumphs is on show at Abu Dhabi: the first complete edition in Arabic of the Thousand and One Nights, printed in 1835.

The first edition of the collection of Arabic folk tales printed anywhere in the Arab world, fewer than a dozen copies are known to exist in libraries. Privately held copies are even rarer; this copy, from the collection of the French historian and orientalist Charles Barbier de Maynard, who died in 1908, is priced at £250,000.

The impact of the Bulaq Press is celebrated by Egypt’s state library, the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, which in an online history credits it with having played “an essential role in disseminating science and knowledge throughout the country. 

“As books and legible material became available, a new class of intellectuals emerged, to later form the basis for a comprehensive modernization of the whole society.

“Other outcomes included an increase in the number of private schools and the emergence of female education. As the class of intellectuals broadened, self-expression and free opinions appeared in the press and daily newspapers.” 

The Bulaq Press “was the main force behind this historical transformation that transferred Egypt from the Dark Ages of ignorance and backwardness and into the age of knowledge, freedom and awareness.”

The advantages of modern printing with movable type, demonstrated by the Bulaq Press, were quickly appreciated elsewhere in the Arab world. The first printing press in Makkah was set up in 1882, and the first newspaper — called Hijaz — followed there in 1908. 

In 1949, a specialist publishing house was set up in Makkah to produce the first copies of the holy Qur’an to be printed in Saudi Arabia — a task that previously had been left to printers in Egypt. 

In 1984, the King Fahd Complex for the Printing of the Holy Qur’an opened in Madinah and has since produced hundreds of millions of copies of the holy book in Arabic and in multiple translations.

The Bulaq Press, also known as the Amiria Press, survives to this day. Its operations were paused during the British occupation of Egypt, but in 1956 it was revived by Gamal Abdel Nasser, the then Egyptian president, and has continued publishing books and other materials as part of the country’s ministry of trade and industry.
 

 


Syria briefly detains head of Palestinian group: faction officials

Updated 47 min 24 sec ago
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Syria briefly detains head of Palestinian group: faction officials

  • An official from the Damascus-based PFLP-GC told AFP that “secretary-general Talal Naji was arrested” in the city
  • A third faction source said “Naji was asked... to report to one of the security branches and has not returned“

DAMASCUS: Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command officials said Syrian Arab Republic authorities on Saturday briefly detained the head of the faction, which was close to ousted ruler Bashar Assad’s government.
Talal Naji’s detention came just weeks after Palestinian group Islamic Jihad’s armed wing said the new authorities had held two of its officials on unspecified charges.
The United States, which considers Palestinian factions including the PFLP-GC to be “terrorist” organizations, has said Washington will not ease Assad-era sanctions on Syria until it has verified progress on priorities including acting against “terrorism.”
An official from the Damascus-based PFLP-GC, requesting anonymity as the matter is sensitive, told AFP that “secretary-general Talal Naji was arrested” in the city.
Another official confirmed the arrest, while a third faction source said “Naji was asked... to report to one of the security branches and has not returned. Most likely he was arrested.”
Two PFLP-GC officials later confirmed Naji had been released, with one saying he was held for 10 hours and freed after “local and international mediation.”
The official said it remained unclear why he had been arrested.
The second source confirmed Naji’s release, saying: “He’s at home and in good health.”
Last month, a statement from the Al-Quds Brigades said Islamic Jihad’s Syria official Khaled Khaled and organizing committee member Yasser Al-Zafri had been detained for days “without explanation.”
The Iran-backed group expressed hope “that our brothers in the Syrian government” will free the pair, noting their detention comes as the group is “fighting the Zionist enemy” in the Gaza Strip.
In late March, US State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce said Syria’s new authorities should “fully renounce and suppress terrorism, exclude foreign terrorist fighters from any official roles (and) prevent Iran and its proxies from exploiting Syrian territory.”
The PFLP-GC was founded in 1968 after breaking away from the leftist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
When conflict erupted in Syria in 2011 with the brutal repression of peaceful pro-democracy protests, the PFLP-GC stood firmly by Assad’s government.
After militants and rebels overran parts of the Yarmuk Palestinian refugee camp on the outskirts of Damascus in 2012, the PFLP-GC’s armed wing fought alongside Syrian government forces to take it back.
The group is designated as a “terrorist organization” by the United States and European Union and is accused of masterminding the deadly bombing of Swissair Flight SR330 in February 1970, as well as several attacks on Israeli civilians.


Israel intercepts missile, Houthis claim attack

Updated 19 min 5 sec ago
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Israel intercepts missile, Houthis claim attack

  • The latest missile fire comes a day after Israel said it had intercepted two missiles in 12 hours — both claimed by the Houthis

JERUSALEM: The Israeli military said on Saturday it intercepted a missile launched from Yemen, the third such attack claimed by the Houthis in two days.
The Houthis, who control swaths of Yemen, have launched missiles and drones targeting Israel and Red Sea shipping throughout the Gaza war, saying they act in solidarity with Palestinians.
Houthi military spokesman Yahya Saree, in a video statement on Saturday, said the group had targeted a military installation in central Israel “using a Palestine 2 hypersonic ballistic missile.”
An Israeli military statement earlier said that “a missile that was launched from Yemen was intercepted” after air raid sirens sounded in several areas of the country.
A journalist in Jerusalem said sirens were heard in the city.
The latest missile fire comes a day after Israel said it had intercepted two missiles in 12 hours — both claimed by the Houthis.
The Houthis had paused their attacks during a recent two-month ceasefire in the Gaza war.
But in March, they threatened to resume attacks on international shipping over Israel’s aid blockade on the Gaza Strip.
The move triggered a response from the US military, which began hammering the militia with near-daily airstrikes starting March 15 in a bid to keep them from threatening shipping in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden.
US strikes on the Houthis began under former President Joe Biden, but intensified under his successor, Donald Trump.
Since March, the US says it has struck more than 1,000 targets in Yemen.
The Houthi-run Saba news agency said that US strikes hit the capital Sanaa and the neighboring districts of Bani Hashish and Khab Al-Shaaf.

 


Jordan, UK explore deepening trade ties under partnership agreement

Updated 03 May 2025
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Jordan, UK explore deepening trade ties under partnership agreement

  • Talks in Amman discuss progress made under 2021 deal and explore further avenues of collaboration
  • Trade envoy Iain McNicol outlines Britain’s 'keenness' to strengthen trade ties

AMMAN: Jordan and the UK have reaffirmed their commitment to strengthening economic and trade cooperation under the framework of their 2021 bilateral partnership agreement, the Jordan News Agency reported.

During talks in Amman on Saturday, Minister of Industry, Trade, and Supply Yarub Qudah met with British Trade Envoy to Jordan, Kuwait, and Palestine, Iain McNicol, to discuss progress made under the deal and explore further avenues of collaboration.

Philip Hall, the British ambassador to Jordan, also attended the meeting.

According to a statement from the Jordanian Ministry of Industry, the discussions touched on efforts to streamline rules of origin and the development of mechanisms to monitor the agreement’s implementation; chief among them the launch of a Partnership Council and technical committees.

Qudah highlighted several ongoing challenges, including the complexity of the rules of origin, and the comparatively high costs of compliance and export for Jordanian producers.

He stressed the need to review the terms of the current agreement to ensure Jordanian products are granted preferential access to UK markets— particularly in light of the United Kingdom’s Developing Countries Trading Scheme, which offers more favorable terms to other nations.

McNicol affirmed Britain’s “keenness” to deepen trade ties with Jordan and expressed support for improving the Kingdom’s investment environment.

He also emphasized the UK’s commitment to sustainable trade initiatives, including support for small and medium-sized enterprises, and stimulating British investment in Jordan’s “vital” productive sectors.

Looking ahead, both sides agreed to accelerate preparations for the upcoming Jordanian-British Business Forum, which they said would provide a key platform to strengthen private-sector ties and explore new areas of economic cooperation.